Thursday, August 02, 2012

The ongoing Jonah Lehrer saga...

In a story about the rise and fall of Jonah Lehrer, who we and Kevin Randle quote in blog posts, there is this, which pertains to all of us who contribute blog material:

To be a writer, a public intellectual in this day and age, means needing to
constantly produce content that is timely, lucid and compelling. There’s barely
any time to think and process and generate fresh ideas. Stories grow stale in
less than a day because the Internet is always moving forward, hungrily, in
search of the next story, the next trend, the next think piece. You have to keep
up or you will get left behind. Anyone could find themselves in Lehrer’s
shoes.

6 Comments:

And that little piece of moral relativism sums up in a nutshell the problems of our modern world - the belief that anyone could wind up doing bad things.

Well, I for one disagree. Lehrer is a liar and a fraud. Not everyone would manufacture quotes to make a point, and then lie about it, because not everyone lives their life like that. Some people just like to think that they do, because it makes it easier for them to sleep at night (and I'm not referring to you, here, Rich).

This has happened a few times to the big papers (and online now) in the past decade.

I think Lehrer had some significant connections to have landed him a nice job like that at such an early age. And no one over seeing him. Just the right atmosphere to be creative and then some.

If Lehrer plays his cards right he might end up making more money than he could of imagined. Think of Mike Barnacle formerly of The Boston Globe. Fabrications and plagiarism - not just once but enough times where he had to be 'let go' as his excuses and half-baked apologies meant nothing anymore because he kept doing it.

And, where did Barnacle show up shortly thereafter? On MSNBC...where his personal friend Chris Matthews introduced him on the network. Since then every morning, on 'Morning Joe', there is Barnacle opining about politics and culture with moral authority.